Watari Pt 1: L\'s Heirs

Matt entered their hotel room first, still unsure as to whether they would be staying another night. The plan had been to go home today, but Mello had paused in his silent thought just long enough to mention that they might stay over. As the blond wandered past him, Matt found his own discarded jacket and did what he knew he should have done the night before. Mello looked up sharply. "You stole the bug scanner from Nathalie\'s house?"



"Yeah." Matt shrugged. As an afterthought he added, "Accidentally."



"What have we actually got here?" He held his own semi-automatic in his hand, knowing that Matt had one too. "I mean tools. Weapons."



"Your mind, my laptop, two guns, my mind for what it\'s worth. Oh!" Matt paused part way through scanning a wall to retrieve the pen drive from his keyring. "The capacity to spy on everything that Nathalie does on-line and to look through her files."



Mello nodded, "So you\'re thinking, as am I, that this is someone from Wammy\'s who set us up?"



"Undoubtedly so." He handed the memory stick to Mello and continued thoroughly sweeping their room. "Which gives us eleven suspects."



"I make it twelve."



Matt shrugged, "Then you\'re probably right. Who are your twelve?"



"Fourth generation Wammy\'s House kids, minus me, you and Jonny. " Mello blinked. "Change that to thirteen, Jonny could have committed suicide and set it up to look like it was me."



"I also discounted Near on the basis that this isn\'t his style." Matt focused on the wall. "He would want to beat you intellectually or else it wouldn\'t be a victory." He had ascertained that their room was clean, so communicated that to Mello and put the kettle on. "Are we staying here tonight?"



"I don\'t know yet." Mello glanced at his watch. They were supposed to check out by ten and it was already two in the afternoon. "Go and sort us out another night anyway, though we might not stay." He opened his wallet and handed over a wad of notes. "I\'d rather be somewhere more inconspicuous to be honest."



By the time Matt returned, looking pensive, the kettle had boiled and Mello was searching through Nathalie\'s contact list. "They know about the fan and the window. They\'re fining us fifty pounds." Mello just rolled his eyes and continued scrolling down the names. Matt made their drinks, then wandered off into the bathroom. His lover had been out early, visiting a chemists for a cool pad, designed for a forehead to soothe a migraine, but this was wrapped around Matt\'s penis. It had got him to Camden and back, but was starting to lose its temperature. Mello had brought five of the things, but Matt considered his options. There was no restriction on painkillers now, which definitely seemed preferable to strapping plastic pads between his legs. The tattooing had been done. The swelling was done. He urinated without difficulty and briefly considered seeing if he could get an erection. This wasn\'t the time. There were more important things to concentrate on than whether he had been permanently damaged, like what those bastards had done to Mello. Matt swallowed three strong painkillers and rejoined his lover.



"She appears to be in touch with everyone except me, you and Near." Mello commented, then stood. "Ok, my brilliant beauty, hack me a link to every fucking one of them." He counted on his fingers, as Matt took his place in front of the laptop. "Nathalie, Luigi, Lamond, Linda, Deontic, Chrissie, Century, Hollow, Salvo, Mairoo, Fenian and Near."



Matt stopped his typing and looked up. "It\'s going to take me more than this to hack Near. Freak."



"Yes, but I have every faith in you, guapo." Mello patted his shoulder and sat down on the chair opposite, his feet up on the windowsill. "I want to know who was talking to who, and when. What was reported from last night."



Matt nodded. "I can do this a lot faster from home. I\'ve got more programmes on my hard-drive than my server and I\'ve only got one laptop. Why didn\'t you bring yours?"



"Didn\'t want to be distracted from my revision." Mello shrugged. "Just do what you can. Who is your top suspect?"



"Nathalie."



"Why?"



"She\'s the bitch who said that she wanted you dead and she had access to my cigarette butts, from her ashtray. Did you come away with the chocolate you were eating at her house last night? Plus she got a look at your gun twice. I\'m assuming that the bullet in Jonny matches your make and model?"



Mello smiled. "I do believe you just actually thought about things. You\'re slipping. We\'ll make a detective out of you yet." He ignored the dirty look flashed in his direction. "I don\'t think we can discount any of them. If there is communication between them, then it only takes a visit to the shop to come out with your cigarettes and my chocolate."



"Yeah, but you\'d need a smoker to turn them into realistic butts. You could burn them down, but you wouldn\'t get the discolouration." Matt reached into the ashtray beside the laptop and selected an extinguished end at random, which he handed to Mello. "Look, I\'ve squashed the filter between my lips and, well, that filter used to be white. You won\'t get that unless it\'s smoked properly."



"Your poor lungs." Mello\'s nose was wrinkled in distaste, but he gestured surrender before Matt could even adequately glare. "Ok, you\'re right. Lamond was smoking. Nathalie, Luigi, Lamond and Deontic all had access to your ashtray last night. But we don\'t know who visited Nathalie since then. They would have had access too."



"There\'s more. I don\'t normally smoke this brand. These are Croatian duty-free."



Mello blinked. "You fucking genius, Matt." He grinned. "Let\'s narrow this down to those who were there last night." His mobile \'phone signalled a text message. Mello read it and looked up. "Ok, Roger has sent through all of the files. Let\'s have a look at them and especially let\'s see if those butts were Croatian duty-free." The windows were reduced and the laptop turned towards the blond. A moment later, he was sighing in exasperation. "What the fuck\'s up with this machine? It\'s taking forever to load."



"I\'m draining most of the CPU and RAM hacking Wammy people."



Mello sighed. "You\'re right. You should go back to the New Forest and work on this. I\'ll..."



"Over-ridden." Matt shrugged, getting up to make another cup of tea. "If you think I\'m leaving you alone in London, with those fuckers trying to stitch you up, you\'ve got another think coming. You\'ll just have to factor me watching your back into your plan."



"What?" Mello looked up, startled. "Matt, you\'ll do what I fucking tell you to do."



"I\'m not budging." Matt glanced across to see how this was being received. Mello was just frowing at him. "It\'s personal. They are attacking you. I\'ve got to defend your virtue, that\'s my job. Besides, \'I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul.\'"



"If this is your attempt at romantic, it\'s not the time or the place. Don\'t try to win me over with Bronte." The blond focused on the screen again. "It\'s only 60% loaded!"



Matt wandered over to the table and pushed past Mello\'s arm to sit on his lap. Arms around his neck, he planted a kiss on his lover\'s lips. "I\'m not prepared to leave you to do this on your own. I know you can and I know you would martyr yourself to get to the truth here. You can try sending me away, but I\'ll just go out and spend all of our savings on computer equipment. I\'d get another room in this hotel and I\'d stalk you. You might as well keep me with you."



Mello shook his head, but he was smiling. "We might both be better off going home, to be honest. I want to see these files to ascertain that. I\'m just working through my priorities, so please stop worrying." He added a kiss of his own. "That tattoo looks amazing." Matt flashed a smile. "How\'s your bruising?"



"S\'alright. I\'ve had some painkillers."



Mello\'s hand slipped beneath the green t-shirt and part of his jeans waistband to press against the bare skin of Matt\'s back. "I haven\'t forgotten. We only delayed things because of rushing off to the appointment. We still need to know if you\'re alright before we can decide where we\'re going." He glanced over his lover\'s shoulder at the 63% download, then kissed him. "It might be that we\'re going for medical help before we even think of this case." Another kiss to still Matt\'s protest. "Danger, wasn\'t it? How\'s this for danger? Someone is after us and someone could find us. We could be killed. We could be arrested at any minute, because I think that Lamond and Deontic have enough location to work out which hotel we\'re in or, at least, narrow it down. You\'re hurting and sore and your sadistic bastard of a partner is going to take you, whether you want it or not." His grip tightened around Matt\'s body and Mello smiled. "Don\'t even think about struggling, because I can and will overpower you."



"Yes, that would do it." Matt spoke slightly breathlessly, blinking, before twisting around to work the laptop with one hand. "Only I just made that go a bit faster for you. The files will be downloaded in..." He didn\'t get to finish before Mello pushed him to his feet, frog-marching him to the bed. "Right."



"If someone does batter down our door, they are just going to have to live with what they witness." Mello smirked. He tipped Matt onto his back, then placed the Beretta on the bed beside him. "Don\'t arse around with it. It\'s loaded." He unbuckled Matt\'s belt and opened the flies. Pushing up his t-shirt, kisses trailed down from his navel to the waistband of his boxers, then Mello\'s hands swept down to caress Matt\'s inner thighs. The redhead winced, but he was hard. Mello smirked. "You are such a fucking whore. That\'s all it took." He sniggered. "How does it feel?"



"Painful." Matt replied, cautiously.



"Good painful or bad painful?"



"Google just said it was alright if I could get erect."



"Well, it must be true, if it\'s on the internet." Mello grinned. "God I want you! But I\'m not touching until it looks a better colour. I don\'t want to make it worse for you. So," he stood and crossed himself. "I\'m abstaining." He walked back to the laptop and cheered. "It\'s loaded."



Matt remained lying on his back, where he\'d been left. He turned his head to view the gun, then sighed and closed his eyes. "Great."



"Fuck." Mello whispered, gazing at the screen. "Matt, just think of cabbages or something and come over here." Matt slowly joined him, sinking down into the seat beside him to look at photographs of the scene. "Jonny\'s dead."



"We knew that, Mell."



"No." Mello frowned. "Intellectually I knew, but... look." He opened an image of the corpse of the dead genius. "Let\'s just step back for a moment here. Remember that Christmas when Roger gave us permission to go to the proper midnight Mass at Winchester Cathedral, for anyone who wanted to go, and I made you come with me and Jonny came too. Remember us all holding those candles and that woman leaned back and her hair went really close to my candle? Remember you and him getting the giggles during one of the readings, because Joseph was told by the Archangel to call his son, Emmanuel, and one of you - and I\'m still pretty sure it was you - said something about him messing that one up, because he called him Jesus. Do you remember?"



"Yes."



"Remember when he first arrived at Wammy\'s and did nothing but cry for about six months? Remember Roger calling us in to see him and asking us to be patient, as Jonny had had a very traumatic time. Then you were angry with me, because you hadn\'t done anything, but you still got the extra work as punishment. Remember when he flooded the laundry? Century told us that he\'d heard it was because Jonny had stains that he didn\'t want Ann to see. Remember?"



"Ok, stop." Matt took both of Mello\'s hands and placed them together over the rosary. "I also recall that you hated each other\'s guts; that yesterday he was definitely writing about ways in which he hoped you\'d died; and that, also yesterday, you held a gun against his stomach. You\'re a lot of things, Mello, but hypocritical isn\'t one of them. Someone we knew is dead, now say whatever words you need to say to commend his soul to the hereafter and let me look at his picture."



"You\'re a hard-faced bastard, Matt." Mello glowered, but nevertheless closed his eyes and murmered the \'De Profundis\'. He looked and felt a little more relaxed afterwards, looking at Matt with a small smile.



"You always look about five years old when you\'ve been praying." Matt replied.



"Pardon?"



"You go all innocent. It\'s quite sweet really." Matt flicked onto another image, minutely examining every inch of what he could see. Despite the grim nature of what his eyes were showing him, Matt smiled. "Pretty, little Mihael with his angellic face."



Mello bit his lip and concentrated on the screen again. "Please don\'t make fun of me." But his gaze kept straying from the image to Matt. "Do I really?"



"Yes." Matt leaned in to peer more closely at a blown up section of one of the pictures. "All of it." He shook his head, changing the subjet. "The chocolate is too small. It\'s only a 45g bar. Look, you can see it poking out from the side of the settee." He reached across and picked up Mello\'s chocolate from the table in front of him. Blood red with a splodge of black, with the golden lettering, but it was four times the size of the chocolate in the picture. "A bar that size would last you about 30 seconds. It wouldn\'t be half eaten." He flicked through the gallery, until he found a close up. "Mell, bite into that. Proper bite. That \'I\'m bad news, see me eat chocolate\' sort of bite."



"Anything for you, my lovely." Mello surveyed the chocolate bar. "What do you mean my \'I\'m bad news...\'?" He stopped as Matt took the chocolate off him and, removing the rest of the wrapper, broke off a single long strip of six chunks and handed it back. "Have you got a death wish or something?"



"Bite into just that bit. I want to see your teeth marks."



"It\'s going to melt!"



"Mell, it\'s six squares of chocolate in your hand. It won\'t last long enough to melt." Matt sighed. "It\'s never been this much hard work to get you to eat chocolate before." Mello scrowled and bit into it. He sat there holding the chunk in his teeth, looking back at the remainder. "Yes. Perfect. You don\'t bite into it, you snap it. That\'s why you make so much bloody noise doing it. Look, no teethmarks, it\'s like tearing raw meat or something. There\'s a clean break." Matt pointed to the picture. "Unlike here, where the edges are serated. Someone bit down into this chocolate. Plus the cigarettes are Croatian. There\'s a close up of them earlier on."



Mello leaned on his hand, smiling up. "You are clever, aren\'t you, Matty."



Matt frowned. "Why the fuck am I looking at all of this stuff, instead of you? I\'m going to miss half of what you\'d get and we\'re probably running out of time." He stood up. "I\'ll make another cup of tea."